I don't understand how it would cut diversity if the "drain" is a short range around the main target. You can still Yamato anything (even units right in front of the target!) with no ill effects, just not the base.

And again, cannon is on the main target and shoots within B/C AA range, the only things that would be effected by this is banshees (attack range 6) and battlecruisers (range 6) that are attacking the main target.

Give the base an energy drain mechanism (within 10-15 range or something) and a cannon that shoots air units for a billion damage within BC AA range, no more cheese. That is unless reapers have anti-structure grenades, in which case a medivac/reaper cheese might be possible.

Can I say that I really like almost everything about this map? The layout, the varied enemy compositions, an ally that can actually do something (looking at you, LotV epilogue) . I'm still going to complain about the amount of vespene you get early, but that's just because I love vespene, and upgrades.

Really tough map, loved the boss, even though half of my deaths trying to figure out the cue for orbital strikes before realizing what it is, and a further half forgetting about it (not spoiling it for anyone).

A few things:

You can snipe the base using cloaked banshees, head up the left corridor, turn left between the bunker and the cannon, flying a little closer to the cannon, go up, hit the turret by the base, then GG.

Why the double orbital strikes on the corners? The instant-kill seems a bit much.

PLEASE, PLEASE put a cooldown on cloak, starting when he decloaks. The number of times I've decloaked him and he instantly cloaks again.... ugh.

I'm worried about ultrasonic pulse or whatever his second phase ranged stun is. It seems too crippling, especially during a rocket phase or a minion phase. While I never died because of it, there have been a number of close calls.

I do like the voiceover for the scientist and the Protoss commander, but as for Valerian, he seems a bit bored, if not monotonous. It just might be me reading his lines in Valerians voice and comparing his condescending, accented tone to your current voiceover. You may want to get a second opinion.

The random I was with for the 2-man says that your voice was "sexy" so if not sarcasm, is a point 100% in your favour.

Also, I had a look at the zealot targeting weirdness. They tend to prioritize medics/Dr.Munro a lot higher, so they'll charge towards one even if they are blocked by a few rines or if it's a quarter way around the army.

I think that the enemy army composition is designed well (even if attack waves are fairly weak in general).

Attack waves are constant enough so that you don't want both players leaving the base (not even bunkers will protect you).

And now for general comments/criticism

Was able to beat the map (and destroyed all structures) solo. 2 players shouldn't have much of a problem because 1 can defend while the other attacks.

(made an hour after the first paragraph) Yeah I played this 2-player and practically carried my teammate to victory.* Could use a difficulty upgrade imo.

One thing that should be changed is the top waves imo. Right now they have to go around the sides of the hill, and that leaves them open to a player standing on a higher level of elevation.

The zealots had a tendency to charge around the sides of my army then die before they hit something. I guess this is SCII AI trying to hit medics in the centre.

One thing that I disliked (map wise) was that near the right edge of the map you can't center on your army. It's just personal preference but I like keeping my army in the center of the screen.

If anyone needs a "temporary friend" to test the map, it's TChosen1#1560

\*Unimportant details of carrying but useful as a testament to how little imput is required from one player:
Guy didn't build a combat unit until 2 minutes in, and more than 1 barracks until 12 minutes (as a comparison, I was operating off of 5 racks at that time) and was operating off of 7 or so SCV's on minerals, 6 on gas (20,6 for me) for the longest time. I solo'd the expansion defences, the big defence in the center-right, and 3-4 attack waves

- Well the dps gets energy max upgrade allowing her to do plasma launcher often. The support get energy efficiency allowing him to cast temporal shield often. The medic gets HP bonus since many boss ability can one shot 150 HP.

- Not sure with what you mean with 'terrible equips 0/10 team.

- Right, Kaiser was nerfed because one of the youtubers [redrelled red7] upload a video of him spamming and soloing the whole map with just Kaiser.

The terrible equips 0/10 was a joke about the team not optimizing their passives (which I stylized as equipment) for a raid groups "roles".

Just played through the campaign on hard (saw the weekly testing thread). I'm terrible at writing long form praise all at once (expect a ton of edits while I find more and more good things to say). So I'll just say it's good and challenging in many different ways, and I had plenty of fun. Special mention to all the cool bosses. All of them were fun to fight, even the ravager (once I figured out when the lasers spawned). The heroes were well-designed, even if the hydra is a bit over the top with the 0 damage taken 1/2 the time.

Just take my word that there's a number of good things I can say, but I can't quite write it down.

Not much I can nitpick on, but here's the list.

Missions 3 and 6 could do with a little bit of a difficulty upgrade. The DPS of the snow giants is too low to be a threat in 3, the "constant waves" aren't really more difficult (sending 6 marines every 30 seconds is harder to defend against than sending 1 marine every 5 seconds), plus once you kill a hive nothing can possibly break your base. Hybrid don't do enough DPS to be a threat except the behemoth. (also the 6 boss seems weak compared to all the HP restore stuff you have, I didn't use a single restore on hard)

There's a number of grammar mistakes, most of which that can be attributed to one of three categories in general:

Nouns that are plural/not plural when they should be "there is a lot of creeps" -> "there is a lot of creep"

Sentences that would be a little smoother (at least for me) if words like "are, a, the" are added. "allies dies" -> "an ally dies" or "an ally has died"

Not big mistakes, but they make the dialogue seem a bit clunky. I'll point out more if no one's willing to proofread.

And really minor stuff:

I think zealot Ben Ar should be 50 or 100 shields and 200 or 250 hp. As it is now the main reason you can suffer in missions 1 and 2 (besides the reavers) is really that Ben's operating at 150 hp since you rarely spend a lot of time healing shields before a fight (especially with the really expensive shield regen move). That makes him the lowest HP member of the party, despite being the frontline. (whirlwind should also probably get a buff, 10 DPS is pretty weak compared to his auto-attack)

The Ravenger red lasers come without warning.

The first bits of mission 9 feels a bit slow paced coming off the heels of mission 8 and its base control.

Mission 8 boss #2 feels kinda weak just because of all the time it wastes chasing Mira and doing zilch to the others. I highly recommend it can still cast other abilities during the chase. (If anyone complains, let them know that they can set mira on a patrol circle while the others shoot)

Frivolous stuff:

If the client is staying at the Cradle of Life, how'd he pay the last installment for the mercs? He stiffed us! Sonofa...

Why does the DPS get the energy max upgrade, the support get the energy efficiency upgrade, and the backline medic get the tank upgrade, and the guest party member gets the legendary -33% energy cost. Utterly terrible equips 0/10 team. Only reason they could win was cause of OP hydra who could DPS/tank/and heal thank god he was nerfed.

Hey. Recently played through some of the missions and I noticed something on mission 4. You can place a creep tumor and get it to spread under the door, and get the abberation to unburrow. You can conquer the facility without worrying about the timer. You can get wargirl to transfuse through the door (sadly she can't drop the ursadons), plus once you get roaches you can micro them. (I'll upload a screenshot soon, if necessary).

Otherwise, it's fun. Love the unique twists on missions (even if I want to rant on and on about the vespene limitation, especially mission 1), the unique story, the unique and whimsical (kill 30 overlords) sidequests, the replayablilty (what happens if I don't kill the bio-dome, for example).

Yes, comparing one giant online map (and its three tutorial maps) to a bunch of singleplayer offline campaigns is such a fair comparison! Next thing you know, Pokemon is considered better than WoW because it has more pets to obtain.

I don't know what type of expectations you guys have/had about SCU, but the fact remains that for an MMO made with modding tools, it's quite impressive. Even more so considering they've packed everything into one map.

In fact, being able to learn how to do different terrain within one map would be among the most helpful things for the community to gain from this.

Not saying that it's not impressive (I've put too many hours in (seriously, you don't want to know) and still find it fun), just hoping that it will be done better (well, there isn't much they can improve tbh) at some point.

And I think the gist of terrain thing is covered somewhere (on one of the twitch interviews; Jayborino's or livebee's). May not be explained well enough in context of the editor, I guess.

Edit: and to be brutally honest, content isn't always everything. I've had 2 people that I know who played the PTR a huge amount (with its 9 hours of content), but now have stopped playing SCU altogether.

Highly unlikely. SCU is kept alive by its unrivaled amout of content, polish and hype. Knowing the SC2 modding community, there will always be very very few mods that could ever dare stand a chance against such a mammoth, even if they have the tools. Case in point: For years now we have been able to do complex stuff with SC2 models, but for some reason Im still the only one to really ever have made extensive use of the amazing cinematic models. Hu.

In the 3 days, I've gotten messages from friends about:

Have they patched the game yet? (polish)

I hope they replace the final boss (hype)

Once you complete all of SCU's content once there isn't much to do. (content)